by Kate Elliott
The memory of the beauty of the cathedral hit her with doubled force. There the biscop had led Mass. There the congregation had gathered, standing, to sing. There Sanglant and his Dragons had knelt, before the altar, that morning in their last brief moments of life before they rode to their deaths.
Voices. She froze, canting her head back to listen. Let Lavastine and his men not come out yet!
Into the cold emptiness of the nave, below, an Eika strode into her line of sight. He wore the distinguishing marks of a princeling, a skirt of mail fashioned of gold and silver links that draped from hips to knees, winking in and out of the light as he walked the floor between shafts of sunlight, and a torso painted with an elaboration of the same swirling cross pattern that graced Bloodheart’s chest. Strangely, he wore a wooden Circle of Unity around his neck.
Alain’s prince! Could it be?
In her surprise, she must have scuffed her boot on the floor.
The Eika princeling faltered, and for that instant she panicked, not moving and yet with her mind shut like a door, blank and empty. But he only faltered because he stared at the heap of garbage beside the altar, which now stirred, woken by that scuff or by the perfume of her secrecy or by the music of the flutes, to reveal dogs and some kind of ghastly creature, surely not human, heavily chained and clothed in the tattered remains of a tabard marked with a black dragon. Yet it had substance and weight, unlike a daimone; it had unkempt black hair as tangled and ratted as that of a filthy ascetic who has sworn off the trivial clothing of human grooming. It had arms and legs, hands and feet, very humanlike, and a cast of skin made dark by grime. It was a hideous thing, so matted and foul that it might as easily have been a grotesque illusion born out of Bloodheart’s vile magic. Or so she hoped. Then it swung round, shoulders bracing as against an attack, and she saw its face.
“God have mercy,” she whispered, the sound forced from her by a shock so profound that she forgot everything, everyone, and even her purpose for being here: The Eika chieftain who sat, unwitting, below her, an easy target. “Sanglant.”
He uncurled completely from the midden and in that instant with his head flung up like that of a hound tasting a scent on the air, she knew he had heard her.
She knew he recognized her voice.
Lady and Lord have mercy. Trapped. Bloodheart’s prisoner for over a year.
He looked more like an animal than a man.
Her throat burned, and she thought she was going to be sick.
She rose.
“No!” he cried, lunging forward to the limit of his chains, lunging toward Bloodheart, or toward the priest, she couldn’t tell. The priest grabbed the chest and hopped backward just as Sanglant was brought up short by the chains, jerked back painfully by the force of his lunge. His dogs growled and leaped forward into the nave. They were not chained.
Bloodheart lowered his flutes and barked out a command in his harsh language. Several Eika soldiers jogged toward the prince, howling and jeering with their inhuman voices.
She lifted Seeker of Hearts and drew down on Bloodheart, string drawn tight, her eye sighted along the arrow to the swirling cross of paint that marked his chest over his heart.
One shot was all she had.
From behind and below she heard the eruption of shouts and pounding feet, the clang of steel and a man screaming, then the howling of Eika calling to battle.
Lavastine had not waited for her—or perhaps he had heard Sanglant’s shout. It no longer mattered.
One shot. She poised, made ready to release, a perfect target, a perfect kill there at his heart—
The bow tugged leftward.
For that instant in which a breath is drawn and released by a person panting under the threat of danger, she resisted.
And then she gave in to it.
“Seeker of Hearts, guide my hand,” she murmured. She let it pull her aim as it willed, and she sighted again as the point of the arrow slid away from Bloodheart, past the little wooden chest resting on the priest’s knees, and rose slightly to fix on the left center of his wizened, scaly torso.
There.
She loosed the arrow.
The point buried itself in flesh. The priest clapped both hands to his chest and tumbled backward as the wooden chest on his knees spun forward and cracked on the stone floor.
With a great, ear-shattering roar, Bloodheart lurched out of his throne, staggered, and stumbled to his knees. His bone flutes scattered around him. One splintered and broke.
“Priest! Traitor!” He roared again, a cry of pain and fury that echoed and hammered in the nave, resounding and rebounding off the vault. One window cracked and shattered, and shards of glass rained down from on high.
“Nestbrother!” he cried. A greenish fluid trickled from his mouth as he fell forward and crawled, trying to reach the wooden chest—or the old priest, both of which now lay within the limits of the prince’s chains. But Sanglant reached them first only to have the old priest stagger to his feet, snap off the haft of the arrow embedded in his chest, and scramble out of reach of prince and enchanter alike. Sanglant kicked the wooden chest out away from Bloodheart’s groping hands.
“Nestbrother!” The Eika chieftain’s voice was ragged now with a liquid lilt as though blood drowned him in his unmarked chest. Dogs bolted in to nip and bite at him, sensing his weakness, but he slapped them away and jerked up to his feet as bubbles of blood frothed on his chin. “By the bond between us I call on you to avenge me. Let your curse fall on the one—”
He clawed at his throat, staggered forward again while the old priest scuttled backward and made some kind of averting sign with his hand as he spoke words Liath couldn’t hear. Dust swirled on the choir floor, caught up in a sudden whirlwind, and a swarm of unseen creatures like stinging gnats spun around her, then sheared away as though wind had blown them off. Flailing blindly, Bloodheart made one last desperate lunge—
Only to drop, dead, at Sanglant’s feet.
And there on the westward flank of the hill, as the Eika horde took breath to make their final charge and annihilate the last of Lavastine’s infantry, the drums clapped once.
And not again.
XVI
THE UNSEEN
CHAIN
1
“CAPTAIN Ulric, to the gate!” shouted Lavastine above the sudden outbreak of howling and keening that shattered the silence made by Bloodheart’s death. At once, the sound of fighting reverberated through the nave as Lavastine and his men bolted out of their hiding place.
She drew another arrow in time to see Lavastine himself cutting frantically, shield raised, as a trio of enraged Eika bore him backward. A soldier fell beside him, struck down. Lavastine was next, battered to his knees by their attack.
Sanglant lunged forward at the sight of the nobleman trapped and struggling. Liath winced, bracing herself for the jerk when he hit the limit of his chains, then gaped.
There were no chains. All but the iron collar rattled to the ground, lay crumbling there as if they were a hundred years old and turning to dust. Dust they became, sagging in heaps around Bloodheart’s corpse.
She nocked the arrow, but Sanglant and a half dozen Eika dogs hit the melee before she could get a shot off. He had nothing, only his hands, to fight with. Without thinking, she swung a leg over the railing, meaning to drop down, to save him—
His attack was as swift and as brutal as that of the Eika dogs. He had laid two Eika out flat and ripped one’s throat out with his own teeth while she gaped in horror. An Eika swung hard at him, but a dog leaped between them and took the cut meant for the prince while the rest of the pack swarmed the would-be killer, bearing him down to the flagstones. The other Eika retreated. The dogs gorged on the corpses—three Eika, one human. Lavastine jumped to his feet and he and Sanglant vanished from her line of sight as they ran toward the great doors. She swung her leg back and stood, panting, half in shock, trying to steady herself.
“Eagle!” Erkanwulf called to her from the do
or. “You must run! We’re sore outnumbered, and we’re to retreat through the tunnel!”
“Down!” she screamed as she drew—Erkanwulf dropped to his hands and knees—and shot the Eika who loomed behind the lad. The Eika fell with a surprised grunt and tumbled backward down the stairs. She ran, tugged Erkanwulf to his feet, and drew her sword, keeping Seeker of Hearts in her left hand.
“After me,” she said. They had to clamber over the dead Eika soldier to get down the curve of the stairs. She did not know what awaited them below, but as they came around the last curve before the door that let onto the nave her nose caught a whiff of it.
Just beyond the open door, Lavastine and his men had formed up. A line of Eika waited beyond among the litter that carpeted the vast nave, but no one moved. They made a broad curve to cut off access to the cathedral doors as well as leaving Lavastine and his men no room to maneuver out in the expanse of the nave itself.
Next to the door the creature that was Sanglant beat back five dogs, cuffing them until they lay down, whining, and bared their throats to him. Blood from their gorging dripped from their muzzles.
The prince stank. There was no kinder way to put it; the reek hit her like a tangible substance, something you could put your hands into. He started back at her appearance in the door. Blood rimed his lips. His clothes, or what remained of them, hung in tatters on him, cloth pressed into mail, stiff with grime; she had seen poor folk and beggars aplenty in her travels but never anyone as wretched as this. It was hard to believe he was a man, still, or to recall that he had ever been one. He was so foul that she had to look away, but even so she caught a glimpse of his expression. Whatever he was, now, he was ashamed of it.
“God have mercy,” whispered Erkanwulf, behind her. “What is it?”
“Hush.” She slipped out the door.
The dogs growled at her but kept their distance, nipping at Erkanwulf as he dodged past. Sanglant slapped them down but said nothing. Could he even speak?
“We retreat,” said Lavastine. “There are a hundred or more of them beyond the door. But Captain Ulric and his group got out ahead of me. We must hope they win through to the gates.”
“Bloodheart is dead,” said Liath.
Lavastine only nodded curtly. “Make ready to move,” he said to his men. Already she noticed three faces missing, but she could not see beyond the Eika line to count them among those who had fallen in the initial skirmish. “Prince Sanglant, you must go first, with the Eagle. We must get you to safety.”
The Eika line stirred and parted to reveal the Eika princeling who wore the Circle. In the harsh tongue of the Eika, he barked an order and the line faded back by several steps as the princeling stepped forward into the gap.
Erkanwulf handed Liath another arrow from her quiver and she drew on the princeling, sighting at his heart.
He spoke again, still in the Eika language, and the Eika soldiers began an orderly withdrawal from the cathedral. Liath stared, utterly bewildered.
Slowly, cautiously, Lavastine took one step forward.
“Both of you I have seen in Alain’s dreams,” said the princeling in perfect Wendish, pointing with the tip of his spear first at Lavastine and then at Liath.
“Fifth Son!” breathed Lavastine.
“You captured me once—but he freed me. For that reason, I spare your life now.” He set the butt of the spear on the flagstones and canted his head arrogantly, or as at a sudden and compelling thought. Compared to Sanglant, he was a glorious beast, not handsome—for Liath supposed she would never be able to find beauty in their sharp, metal-bright faces—but striking. His eyes had the clarity of obsidian. Gold armbands curled around his arms like snakes. He grinned at them, jewels winking in his teeth, and with each least shifting of his weight the mail girdle he wore made a faint shimmering like distant high bells whispering secrets. “Tell me, Count of Lavas. Did Alain lie to me? King Henry did not come, nor did you intend to wait for him as you told him you meant to.”
Lavastine hesitated, but he did, after all, owe the Eika princeling something in return for their lives. “Visions can’t lie. I did not tell him everything I intended.”
“Ah.” Fifth Son whistled and his dogs bounded over to crowd at his heels. They, too, had been feasting on the corpses, perhaps even on Bloodheart. Scraps of clothing stuck to their tongues, and the saliva dripping from their jaws had an ocherous tint. Most of his soldiers had cleared the cathedral, leaving it empty except for the ravaged corpses. “You’re a wise foe, Count of Lavas. Alas for you that Henry’s army did not come sooner.”
He did not turn to leave; he did not trust them that much. He edged sideways while never letting his gaze leave them until he was at the great doors, awash in sunlight. Then he was gone.
Sanglant bolted. Lavastine started after him, but the prince ran not after the fleeing princeling but rather to the altar where lay Bloodheart’s corpse. The old priest had vanished; only the broken arrow haft remained. Sanglant upended the wooden chest and a downy spill of feathers wafted into the air as a cloudy haze. What in God’s Names was he about? He coughed and pawed through the clot of feathers desperately, finding nothing, then gave up and knelt instead beside Bloodheart’s body. With a howl, he wrenched the gold torque of royal kinship from the dead enchanter’s arm.
The five dogs, crowded at his heels and sniffing and scrabbling at the corpse, raised their heads and howled wildly in answer.
“We had best be gone,” said Lavastine. “We will head for the gates.”
“Is that … creature … truly Prince Sanglant?” asked Erkanwulf, and several other men muttered likewise.
“Quiet!” snapped Lavastine, and then they hushed of their own accord because the prince now walked toward them with his retinue of dogs nipping and barking at his heels. He now held a spear and a short sword, gleaned from the corpses. Liath could not bear to look at him, and yet she kept looking at him. She could not believe he was alive, and yet, even if he was, could that … thing … truly be the man who had fallen at Gent over a year ago?
He broke away before he reached Lavastine and his men, as if he didn’t want to get too close, and came to the huge, open doors of the cathedral. There, he stopped short as if chains had brought him up. As if he dared to go no farther.
“Come,” said Lavastine to the prince as he led his party up beside—but not too close to—the dogs. A few of the men held their hands up over their noses, those who could reach them under the nasals of their helms. The count crossed out onto the steps that fronted the cathedral. The square beyond lay empty under the hazy afternoon sunlight. “We must make haste. My son—”
But he broke off, unable to speak further. In the far distance, Liath heard the sound of horns and the frenzied shouting of Eika.
That Sanglant had stepped out from the shelter of the cathedral she knew without looking, because of the stench. But now he spoke. His voice was hoarse, as if it had grown rusty from disuse—but then, his voice had always sounded like that.
“The horns,” he said, head flung back to listen. “They belong to the king.”
2
STROKE after stroke felled the Eika. As the Lady cleaved through them, some looked into Alain’s eyes, sensing the doom that came upon them, and others simply dropped their weapons and fled. Even their savage fury could not stand long before the Lady’s wrath—and surely not without the throbbing beat of the drums, now silent.
But there were yet more of them, even in disorder, than remained of Alain’s contingent. When an Eika princeling rallied his forces and drove his soldiers back into the remaining wedge of infantry, she pursued that princeling through the thick of fighting and slew him. His forces faltered and broke and ran from her while Alain’s men howled in glee and set back to their work, but even so, Eika kept coming on, and on. There were so many, and their scaly skin so tough to penetrate.
We can’t hope to win through.
Then the call came, resounding from the last rank higher up upon the hill.
“Fesse! the banner of Fesse!”
And then they heard the horns and the thunder of cavalry.
“Henry!” cried another man, and they let out a great cheer: “The king! The king!”
With new spirit they pressed forward, cleaving and hacking at the Eika. Eika banners wavered and retreated—or fell. Eika soldiers hesitated. Some withdrew in an orderly fashion, some fought on, but slowly the hill cleared of them, and Alain struggled free of the press and got to higher ground.
It was true! There, sweeping across the field, came the banner of Fesse and the personal standard of Duchess Liutgard herself. Farther, a line of cavalry under the standard of Princess Sapientia cut wide toward the east, retreating toward the river’s shore pursued by those Eika who fled to their ships. Long shadows from the afternoon sun hatched the western road. Yet another mass of soldiers emerged from the forest under King Henry’s banner.
Alain’s legs gave out from under him and he staggered, dropped, and was only caught by the sudden flurry of hounds that pressed against him, licking him, whining. He slipped on a clod of dirt and fell hard on his rump.
“My lord Alain.” A soldier gripped his arm and bent with concern over him. “My lord! Here, here! Water for our lord!”
They swarmed around him and for once the hounds sat quiet and allowed the soldiers to bring Alain water, to slide his helm off and wipe his face in cool liquid.
“I never saw a man fight so fiercely!” cried one of his soldiers.
“Aye, we would have been dead if not for you, my lord. You shone with the battle lust, you did!”
He winced and thrust himself up.
“A victory!” they cried, celebrating around him with their cheers. Alain squinted, but most of the fighting was now out of his view. The Eika were routed.